What did you do this weekend?

We went back to 1953 and took these pictures.

(I cannot guarantee this will be the last retrocamera post)

This is Cooler Than Me

This is the results of an app called RetroCamera - completely free. Our boots have never looked....artsier.

And here's our artsy cat:

Stress

My mom informed me about a stress level scale for life. Certain life events have a percentage or rating of how stressful they are. Death of a spouse is 100% stressful (Bryan is fine); moving and losing your job are both in the 80-90% range (these apply). So armed with that tidbit I went to google: How stressful is my life? I asked google. (Which reminded me of the time I googled "Where is my mommy?" when I couldn't find her in the house. When my mom later googled something that started with "where is..." and that popped up as a suggested question, I was found out.) I couldn't find the scale of stress my mom referenced. But I did gain some perspective. Among the results was information about how stressful going to jail is, and about how stressful a condition known as gastroparesis is. As proof of the latter: "I cannot describe how stressful my life was during these years. Every time I burped, I would feel anxious. Was 'it' starting again?" I'm not incarcerated and can burp without a problem. I must be fine.

Happy New Year

Happy 2011! It's strange to write that here when I'm pretty sure that I've told the few people who DO read this "Happy New Year" to their face. Forgive my being redundant.

2011 will be an interesting one as it begins the countdown to the end of this here blog. Bryan and I are moving, and alas, the clever moniker "Condo in Cando" will not be relevant. I've thought about all the different "home names" (tudor, cottage, ranch, trailer...which I'm pretty sure I know because of playing the game Life) and I can't think of another combination of town+house that would equal anything better than "Condo in Cando."

I told my sister we were moving and she (facetiously) pointed out that my biggest worry was probably what to name the blog. Granted, I'm not losing sleep over the name, but I did try to do a little blog research to see what other creative names are out there. What I found were a LOT of blogs written by people from the perspective of their pets. I thought, "This is like time-wasting squared; first the intitial time wasted writing the blog multiplied by my time wasted looking at them."

And because that last sentence really made me self conscious about blogging (that's probably what people have thought reading my blog!) I'll stop so as to avoid multiplying YOUR time wasted.

July to the Present

Here are some quick updates that span July to October:

For our anniversary, we went to "Guys and Dolls" at an historical fort. We had a little time to kill beforehand, so we toured.

Luke and I ran a 5K.

Our cat still thinks she's a kangaroo.

We went to Rapid City over Labor Day for my brother's birthday. We went to Boot Hill cemetary in Deadwood and hiked nearly straight up to get to Seth Bullock's grave.

I painted the rest of the kitchen/entryway green.

Bryan's making beef stew today!

And lastly, the volleyball team is 14-4 (exciting!) and the main reason why I haven't been blogging!

Just Like a Movie II

I got to fly with my Dad today! The title is in reference to my previous post about my Dad's airplane: http://condoincando.blogspot.com/2009/08/just-like-movie.html

After assessing the wind situation, Dad deemed it safe to fly and off we went.



Before: on the ground looking out the little porthole. This supplied the AC during the flight.



After: 85 mph and 400 feet in the air.



I got brave and put my finger OUTSIDE the airplane.



Langford

Home

Dad's called flying his personal IMAX.

Checking cows

Lauren: Dad, you know what I call this one?
Dad: Hm?
Lauren: "The Prairie is No Place for a Woman."
Dad: Hm. I call it "Comforting."

Pierpont

Signs

Back down the runway

Butterhorns

The storybook quest (see below) to find more baked goods on which to place jam continues.

Great Grandma Tastad's butterhorns!



In making these, I learned:
1. How to scald milk
2. What "proofing" means
3. How to proof in the oven

Much like blanching rhubarb, I think that both 1 & 3 are not necessary and I'm waiting for my Mom to inform me of this. Regardless, I felt like a pioneer woman when I did both.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

This week has reminded me of the book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Except, in my case, it's, If You Give a Lauren Some Rhubarb.

It all started when Bryan suggested a geocaching adventure on Sunday. Here'a a memorable shot from our day.


(we didn't ever find this cache...it was tucked away down this prairie trail near this museum and Bryan kept saying, "This is weird. I feel uncomfortable." So we gave up and went to DQ instead.)

One of the caches was located on a local farm - and not just any farm. It's the largest herb farm in ND. http://www.gardendwellersfarm.com/
We happened to be there on rhubarb harvest day so we decided to get some. I had no idea how much to get and was told there's about 5 cups in a pie. So I decided to get enough for two pies.

After cutting, blanching, and freezing, I ended up with 14 cups.





Note: after performing this process, I was told by my mom that you don't really have to blanch rhubarb. Noted.

So, I couldn't just let that rhubarb sit in the freezer for 8-10 months. I had to do something with it.

That lead me to buy all the supplies for cannning because I was going to make rhubarb jam.

I forgot to buy one thing though: a BIG pot for the jam to boil in for 15 minutes.

So I watched helplessly as purple goop splattered....

...all over.

My attempts to stir the jam only made it splatter more, burn my hand, and cause the large purple goo splots on the stove.

Fast forward about 30 minutes from this stage and I have a legion of nice jam jars on the counter. Very satisfying.


But, that wasn't quite enough for me. What's homemade jam without homemade buns? So I made my first ever batch of buns.


And I don't remember how the Mouse was satisfied in the book, but for me, I was satisfied when I got to eat a warm bun with jam on it. I was also satisfied to eat it sitting down because my legs were sore from standing in the kitchen all day.

Arizona

Shelby and I went to Arizona to visit...

...Granny...

...and Bumpa over Memorial Day weekend.

It was really fun and they had a lot of great places picked out for us to visit.


This was a Mexican restaurant - Tia Rosa.


We had lunch at an olive orchard. I liked their version of bruschetta: bread topped with marscapone cheese and nutella.





Bumpa has a great mode of transportation.



We had a little mishap when Granny was nearly run over as she was trying to get in the back. No one was injured; we just had a good laugh.


Our traditional Memorial Day weekend cookout: corn on the cob, hot dogs, and potato salad.


I knew going in that we were heading to the desert, and, never having been to AZ before, I didn't really know what to expect as far as the heat...I never appreciated air conditioning more. Here we are enjoying some AC in their Arizona Room.



We came home tan, well fed, and happy.

Flowers and Mutant Grass

School's out so I finally got some flowers planted!



I also did some amateur landscaping and installed this brick edging. There's lots of how to videos online...but in the end I think I made up my own method just because I wanted to get it done quickly.




And for his part, Bryan fertilized the lawn....with a LOT of fertilizer. It has created mutant, turquoise grass that needs to be mowed every 3.5 days. Notice the line where the fertilizer stops. It looks really lush, though, so I'm not complaining.

Geocaching & Track Meet

I went to a Bryan's brother Luke's track meet in Jamestown this weekend saw him compete in a few relays and throw the javelin. He made the javelin look really easy...and he got a PR of 113 feet!



When the track meet was over, Karen and I went on an adventure! I'd been wanting to try geocaching for awhile, but we didn't own a GPS, so the hobby was out of reach. We recently bought a Garmin, so I decided to try to GPS-treasure-hunt. I went online to geocaching.com, became a member, and searched all of the hidden geocaches in the area. Turns out there are a few in Jamestown, so I picked two for us to search after the track meet. The coordinates for the first geocache led us to the campus of Jamestown College, which was really close to the track meet. The little box was cleverly hidden on a light post. We signed the log and returned it to its spot.



The second geocache was a little more interesting. The coordinates took us to a little park with a gazebo. Then the GPS died... As were were searching around the gazebo, a man pulled up and we thought, "Hmmm....is he geocaching, too?"

He wasn't.... It was National Train Day and he was setting up for a program in honor of the day. He showed us the public service announcement and the order of events and lamented that it wasn't well advertised so we should stay around. Another man pulled up and blew his train whistle. That seemed like our signal to get out of there. So we gave up on that geocache, but the hunt made it worth it!